


coffee spoons

by notthebees



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Betrayal and forgiveness, Canon Compliant, Existential Crisis, Gen, M/M, i lied the inexplicit undertones become fairly explicit overtones, inexplicit but arguably romantic undertones, practical defeats and existential victories....arguably existential defeats, regrets and affirmation, who can say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:03:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthebees/pseuds/notthebees
Summary: Execution looming, Wallace looks back on some four decades of service to the Pendleton family.  He wonders if he was a good servant or even a good man, what either of those persons would do in his situation, and whether there can be meaning or heroism in the end that awaits him.





	1. Whispers

Wallace had imagined it a hundred times if once.

It would begin with a crash. He would be eating breakfast, or sweeping, or asleep in his bed, when the Hound Pits door would give with a deafening slam, and the city guards would swarm in like ants. They would shout, Lydia would scream, and he’d hear the pounding of boots across the wood floors in the maybe-dark as he ran for wherever he knew Treavor to be. In some versions he made it to Treavor before the Watch did, put himself between his lord and the rifles, died with his father’s rapier in his hand—but this he knew to be a fantasy. Rather than cut him down in the heat of the struggle, it was far more likely that the Watch would take them separately. _They move so quickly_. Lord Pendleton and the Admiral and the High Overseer would be captured alive, no doubt—taken to Coldridge and questioned and executed in disgrace—but Wallace was no one. A mere servant. No, he and the others would be dragged into the yard, lined up against the wall, and a single bullet put between each pair of eyes. He supposed whatever remained of him would be tossed into the river, and that would be the end.

And now the end had come, not with a crash in the night, but with a whisper overheard through a cracked door. Whispers rising in intensity as he approached: an argument. The Admiral’s voice, harsh and muffled; a rebuttal from Treavor; Martin’s calm, quiet drawl. A moment’s silence. Then the Admiral: “No loose ends.” That had been two days ago, and Treavor had not met Wallace’s eyes since.

* * *

It had begun, though—at least, it had begun for Wallace—with another hushed conversation behind closed doors, and that time Wallace had been within them rather than without. It was after dinner, which had been delayed that night on account of Lord Treavor’s tardiness, the twins by that time—that is, early in the month of Rain—absent from the manor for long stretches, returning, when they did at all, for mere hours at a time. Treavor, for his part, had departed in a rail car that morning bound for parts unknown, which worried Wallace at the time, since for Treavor to disappear without leaving so much as an address at which he might be called upon in case of urgent business was a rarity, and worried Wallace further when it was time for the evening meal and Treavor still had not returned. Trying without success to distract himself from visions of Treavor meeting with, well, anyone or anything one might encounter stalking Dunwall’s streets after curfew, Wallace had hovered in the kitchen until the cook complained of her nerves and asked him to please do that over the threshold in the hall, if he didn’t mind. He was about to send the staff to bed when there at last came a knock at the door, and in Treavor had stridden, in high color, eyes a bit too bright, but for all appearances unharmed. His lordship seemed to be in decent spirits, even apologized for keeping the household up in wait, said he would be satisfied with whatever Mrs. Parsons had leftover after feeding the staff, cleaned his plate, and all with a sort of distracted, manic energy that Wallace did not remark on and of which he contented himself with waiting to learn the cause.

He did not have to wait long. Treavor retired to the study after his late dinner, and requested that Wallace bring a bottle of port. “Oh, and Wallace,” he added as Wallace made his way out of the room. “Bring two glasses.”

“Are you expecting a guest, milord?”

“What? No, no, I’ll tell you when you return.”

Wallace ducked his head. “Sir.” And that was it. The last thing he could remember having done before Treavor delivered the news which had blown Wallace’s world all to smithereens. 

He returned with the port and two glasses.

“Why don’t you sit down, Wallace?” Treavor gestured toward the armchair across from his own with a freshly bandaged hand.

Wallace sat. “Milord, your hand—” he managed before being silenced with a wave.

Treavor stood, poured a glass of wine, and Wallace could only stare dumbly for a moment when Treavor extended the glass to him, long fingers wrapped gracefully around the stem, and Wallace’s hand brushed against them when he tentatively accepted the offering. There was no precedent for this action on Treavor’s part, and Wallace felt unspeakably bold sitting across from Treavor in his study and drinking as if they were....

So he sat there, a bit too rigidly, holding his glass in his lap with two hands instead of bringing it to his lips, and waited in silence for Treavor to pour one of his own and sit back down.

Wallace held very still, suddenly self-conscious in a room, in a house, that for years he had inhabited as comfortably and unobtrusively as an old resident ghost that the family had simply grown accustomed to over time. Treavor, meanwhile, perched on the end of his seat, crossed his legs, then uncrossed them, then leaned forward slightly and cinched his brows. Wallace got the sense that there was a speech coming, and one which had been rehearsed.

“Wallace,” Treavor began, after a drawn-out silence.

“Sir?”

Treavor was quiet again for a moment. “My dear Wallace,” he said, softer this time, now looking him in the eye.

The air in the room had grown thick, and Wallace’s mouth felt too dry to muster another response, and there was a feeling of something that might be mistaken for fear settling in his stomach. _Was it fear, though? Or did he only identify it as such now, here, at the end of all things, knowing what came after?_

“This city, our city, Wallace, has suffered terribly in the wake of Empress Jessamine’s death. It has suffered, and continues to suffer, the ravages of the plague, and mismanagement as well. Mismanagement at...the highest levels of government.” Wallace realized at that moment that he dearly hoped this was about the twins, or the estate, or even Waverly Boyle, anything but—“Our own Lord Regent, some say, had a hand in the chaos that has descended upon us these last months.”

“...Milord…?” Wallace whispered hoarsely.

And then it all came spilling out, how Treavor had fallen in with a disgraced Naval officer and an Overseer ( _who?_ ), and how they had a plan, a plan to find the missing young empress and set her on the throne and overthrow Burrows ( _how?_ )—Well, you see—And that the entire half-baked plan ( _hardly a plan_ ) hinged upon arranging the escape of the Lord Protector ( _Corvo Attano?_ ), who was slated for death, presumably under guard at all hours, _presumably_ a bit softened from questioning ( _soft in the head?_ ). Wallace had never had much of a head for statistics, and neither was he a betting man, but when he tried to estimate the odds of success against the odds that every last man involved would be discovered and shot within the month, the one dwarfed and swallowed the other, and he promptly tried to put it out of his mind, and concentrate on nodding and on holding his glass steady without sloshing the untouched wine.

When the words came to a halt at last, Wallace was still gripping his glass between both hands and searching for a response. Treavor peered at him expectantly, flushed with excitement, the rush born of daring to step further than others; the wine was lending him courage, Wallace could tell, but he was drunk on his own recklessness, his own nerve. Wallace had seen Treavor like this on a handful of occasions, and, in his experience, it rarely ended well. And none of those cases had involved deposing the Lord Regent.

“Wallace, would you—I mean, you will, won’t you? Be my aid? Say something, Wallace,” Treavor whispered impatiently, but something was darkening behind his eyes, and to Wallace they resembled the first inklings of fear—fear that maybe he had made a mistake confiding in Wallace, that perhaps Wallace was about to run to the City Guard right this moment—and no, no, of course not, he had to break the silence —

“Milord...whatever you would undertake in the service of this house, or the empire...I am with you. Wherever this...this...takes you, know that I will follow you. Unwaveringly. I swear it.” Almost unable to look Treavor in the eye, breath coming shallowly in a room which was too hot despite the cold outside, Wallace summoned as much grave sincerity as he could muster into the hoarse oath.

Treavor’s entire body sank into his sigh of relief, and he had leaned forward, his knees inches from Wallace’s, to place a single hand—trembling slightly from excitement or nerves—over Wallace’s wrist. “I have you, then, Wallace?”

“You have me,” Wallace’s voice broke. Something was pulling apart in his chest, the old ache, and it did ache, it _hurt_ , and it was dread and resignation and the swell of something that tasted like pride and despair all at once.

Treavor’s hand trailed from Wallace’s wrist to the back of his palm, where it delivered a warm squeeze, and Wallace remembered having to fight the urge to say, _Please_. Please what, he didn’t know at the time any better than he knew now, but he swallowed the word past the lump in his throat, and instead sat there quietly with Treavor’s hand on his and his heart breaking for reasons he couldn’t articulate.

“I knew I could trust you, Wallace.” A broad grin broke over Treavor’s face, and Wallace matched it weakly. “Always dependable, you are. Right then. What else?” He leaned back in his chair, and Wallace could think again. There were too many things he needed to ask, but one question pressed him the hardest.

“These men you would—” Wallace stopped. Swallowed. “These men you would bind yourself to. You would...commit to such an endeavor with…Who _are_ they?” 

* * *

Most nights after that, Wallace had dreamt of dying. The dreams, when he was able to sleep, had been worse, more vivid, after moving into the pub, and though they differed from night to night, they always ended the same way.

“Those men” were more or less what Wallace had expected, or perhaps feared, though now, standing alone in the servants’ bedroom, mulling over the facts in his head, he found that the Admiral and the Overseer were not weighing heavily on his mind. Not with everything else.

The facts were these: Corvo had returned triumphantly four days ago after exposing the Lord Regent’s crimes and facilitating his arrest. He had celebrated with the rest of them at the pub, and had not been seen after. “Unfinished business,” Havelock told them. Samuel was gone too. Wallace had expected the coronation of Lady Emily to be swift, if not immediate, and yet whatever plans existed for her installment on the throne had not been made known to him. Something about it all had him uneasy, but it was the whispers that had made it all nauseatingly clear for him. _You fool_ , he had cursed himself. _How could you not have known?_

For two days now, Wallace had waited for some sort of acknowledgement from Lord Treavor. Just a word. _He need not even speak—a look, a gesture—anything. Any sign, no matter how small or subtle, and I would know it. I would understand_. But no word had come, no look, no gesture, and it was driving Wallace to worse than despair—to distraction. Desperation. Surely he had it all wrong. There was no _reason_ , none that made sense to him, though he owned these things escaped him. And yet...why would they? Why would _he_? What possible cause could there be to just...no, no, he had it wrong. He must. 

* * *

When he arrived at the kitchen doorway, Lydia and Cecelia were inside, discussing corpses.

“I heard they’re dumping the bodies of the people who die in the Flooded District. I heard there are mountains of them - the bodies - as high as buildings,” Cecelia said breathlessly as she loaded a tray with plates and cutlery.

Lydia spooned jellied eels into a serving dish. “And where did you hear that?” she asked sharply. “Hear it from the gossip on the street?” Cecelia faltered. “Been eavesdropping of the Admiral and the others, have you?”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Cecelia shook her head, eyes wide. “I was just...there, sweeping, and they didn’t even take notice of me!”

“Hmph,” said Lydia. “You keep your head down and your ears closed. It’s not your job to know their business. You focus on your work, girl.” Her gaze drifted to Cecelia, whose eyes were downcast, and for the briefest moment, her look softened, approaching something that could almost be concern, or even pity, and then she picked up the serving tray and swept out through the door to take it up to Havelock’s makeshift office, where he and Lord Treavor and the Overseer were holed up - but not before shooting Wallace a brief, pointed look. 

Cecelia startled and straightened when Wallace entered the kitchen. “Sir,” she nodded, and then went to the tap to rinse pots. Wallace didn’t reply - instead he stayed in the doorway, arrested. He had caught Cecelia’s face before she turned her back to him. It was as if he had never seen her before - he had never realized how _young_ she was.

“How old are you, girl?” The question was more abrupt than he intended.

“Twenty-one, sir,” came the timid reply. _Outsider_. It seemed a shame, was all….

“Cecelia.” He cleared his throat.

“Yes, sir?”

“Stay out of his lordship’s way. And Admiral Havelock, and Overseer Martin. Don’t disturb them. It won’t do. Don’t even work on their floor.”

“But Mr. Higgins, Lydia told me to—”

“Stay out of their sight!” he snapped, and Cecelia quailed.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” She turned back to the washing. Wallace felt a stab of hot guilt at the inward hunch of her shoulders, the way her voice had wobbled on the last word. The apology caught in his throat. _What does it matter, anyway?_

Whatever he had come into the kitchen for, he was unable to recall. His head was a swirl of poor curtsies and “ _Twenty-one, sir_ ,” and suddenly he couldn’t stand to be near her, couldn’t stand to look at her narrow hunched shoulders and picture the way he knew the line of her mouth to be drawn thin and the way her lip would quiver, and there was fury and something curiously akin to shame burning in his gut, and he turned tail and fled so quickly that Lydia coming back down the hall had to nimbly sidestep him.

“Outsider, Wallace, watch yourself!” he heard over his shoulder, but he made no reply, and shut the back door a bit too forcefully behind him.

It was quiet in the yard, under the awning. He could think. _Think_. He needed a plan. He put his hands into his pockets, and then back out; for the first time, he wished he smoked—at the very least, it would give him something to with his fumbling hands. He might have had the good sense to bring some mending out with him, to be useful, at least. _Useful_ , he thought, and smiled bitterly, though there was no one to see it. _It appears I have outlived my usefulness_.

Rack his brain as desperately as he might, his thoughts returned to Cecelia’s nervous chatter of corpses. Of course, he had been spared the ghastly sight until he and Treavor had left the manor on the night they had established themselves permanently in the pub, but there were a few bodies in the street as they crept by moonlight to the canal where the boatman waited, and the water itself had been swollen with corpses—great, bloated things, missing eyes, cheeks, the soft bits, where the hagfish had fed. All people become corpses, of course, and all corpses rot, but it seemed somehow... _indecent_ , to do it in the streets, in public, stink and decay and be nibbled by rats uncovered to the eyes of the world. Shortly before that night, he had heard a servant girl at Pendleton Manor, who had heard it from her sister, who had heard it from a guardsman, tell another that there were bodies piled rooftop-high in the Flooded District, whole mountains of them—the same word Cecelia had used. Mountains of stinking meat. He wasn’t sure he believed it then or now, but how should he know? A third of the city dead, they said, more dying every day—how many bodies was that? They must go _somewhere_. He tried to calculate it—how many corpses, the physical volume of a third of the city’s occupants, how big a grave would hold them. Numbers, he had heard, were truth, and the truth was supposed to light one’s way, wasn’t it? But he had never been good with numbers, and they kept slipping from his brain like soap from wet hands, until he gave up and buried the thought.

He started scanning the street again, up and down. The street was barricaded at both ends, of course, and the little stretch of it outside the Hound Pits seemed to grow smaller and smaller all the time—shorter and shorter, as if the barricades were slowly but inexorably creeping toward the pub from both sides—but surely there was a way out if one was determined enough—maybe through the apartments that lined the street. Suppose he started walking? That was what old dogs did when they could feel death creeping in like the cold, leaching the life and warmth from their bones—they simply limped away and never came back, looking for a peaceful spot, perhaps, or maybe saving others the hassle of a body. He scowled at himself the moment the thought rose unbidden. _Melodrama ill becomes you, Wallace. No need for theatrics_.

He hoped they would bury him, perhaps even scatter quicklime over his remains—being dead was an unpleasant thought, but leaving behind a rotting body for the city to see was worse. Vulgar. _At least let them throw me in the river, please_.

He stood there, ruminating on hagfish and quicklime and decomposition, and the sheer indignity of it, and it crossed his mind that though not all men are of noble birth, it ought to be every man’s right to a noble death, and that if Wallace was honest, he had been ready to die nobly in Treavor’s service—had prepared for it—since the day he was a child himself and a two-year-old Treavor was placed in his care. Why then, _why_ , when Wallace was willing, eager, desperate, even, to fulfill that grand destiny, the glorious finale of a life that had been rather devoid of glory in all its forms, why would Treavor deny him that in the end? _Don’t you know that I would die for you a hundred times over, if only you gave the word?_ he wanted to yell. _You needn’t go about it underhanded like this. Say the word and I’d draw the knife ‘cross my throat with my own hand. Didn’t you ask me, once? Didn’t I swear? Why like this?_

People died every day, though—hoardes of them: how many of them died well? They died in their beds and in the streets, on factory floors and aboard whaling vessels; they died stoically and they died screaming; they died of disease, in their sleep, at the edge of a sword and at the end of a gun. Maybe there were no good deaths at all. And even if there were, maybe Wallace didn’t deserve one. He conceded that perhaps in his life he had not always acted upon his noblest instincts, and perhaps he had not always been kind, and perhaps he had not even been good. ( _Was I good?_ he had wondered after the discovery. _Was I good? Did I disappoint?_ ) He had served Treavor with every breath, though, with every beat of his heart since Treavor came into his care, and surely that had to count for something, somewhere, wherever these things are counted and balanced, if they are at all.

But then, he’d had his chances, hadn’t he? Had his chances, and missed them (his mind flickered back to an autumn day, a hunting trip, the blood). Failed Lord Treavor again and again - failed him his lordship’s entire life, hadn’t he? And so if Treavor’s life had brought him to an alliance with these dangerous men, well, that was Wallace’s fault, wasn’t it? He had failed to protect Treavor from his enemies, and now he had failed to protect Treavor from his friends. Wallace might have laughed bitterly—Treavor would have, but then, Treavor always had a keener sense of irony than Wallace, and a readier laugh.

The door creaked behind him, and Lydia poked her head out. “It’s getting late, Wallace. Don’t you have Lord Pendleton to attend to? Cecelia and I have no choice but to take on your chores while you moon about out here, but I draw the line at helping his lordship into his nightclothes.”

“Of course. My apologies. I’ll be with his lordship shortly.”

Lydia gave him a searching look. “You alright there, Wallace? You’ve been acting strangely all day. For a few days, really.”

Wallace shook his head. “Lots to think about, with all the changes going on. Noble business. I don’t expect you to grasp it.”

“Suit yourself,” sniffed Lydia, retreating into the warmth of the pub. Wallace lingered on the threshold for a moment, then made his way upstairs.

* * *

“We’re moving into the Tower, Wallace.”

“Not...not home, milord?”

Treavor looked ill. There was a gray tinge to his skin, and a tremor in his right hand that Wallace had noticed while gently helping him into his nightshirt, though either might have been the whiskey—and still, still, he would not look at Wallace plainly. He seemed...smaller. _Is it exhaustion_ , Wallace wondered, _or shame? Or have_ they _hurt you?_ His stomach roiled at the thought.

“The Tower. We’re to be installed there temporarily while Empress Emily and—and Corvo—well, we’ll be helping them set things right again.”

“As you say, milord.” Wallace eyed the bottles on the shelf and the floor. The room was chilly, but Treavor sat at the edge of his bed with a vacant, bleary gaze and appeared not to notice. This was the moment, the question was rising in his throat—he wondered what Treavor might do if he sank to his knees and held tight to the thin fabric of his nightshirt and pleaded: _It doesn’t change anything, but I need to know_.

“Wallace,” Treavor said suddenly, meeting Wallace’s eye for the first time in two days, and then it was Wallace’s turn to fight the urge to look away, un-see the desperate, caustic self-loathing in Treavor’s eyes. Wallace knew that look, had seen it before, though never so stark.

A paroxysm of disgust crossed Treavor’s face, but then it passed and his eyes crept downward again. 

“Do you think me decent?” he mumbled softly.

“Milord?”

“A decent man, Wallace.”

Wallace hesitated. “It isn’t my place to pass judgment on your actions, milord.” _A servant’s answer, polite and politic_. “But I have never believed you to be anything but a good man at heart. A decent man, yes. I—” he faltered. “You’re not a cruel man, milord. There is compassion in you, and honor. Had I not believed so...that is...I swore to you, milord. My unerring loyalty.”

At that Treavor smiled, small and bitter. “You believe me good, Wallace? Decent? Honorable? After all I—” and he made a choking noise and fell silent.

“H—” Wallace paused. He might never get another chance, and there was too much, too many things unsaid, too many things he needed to know and make known, and perhaps most were doomed to remain forever unsaid and unknown, but _this_ he could not leave, surely it was not too much to ask—“Have I ever disappointed you, milord?” 

Treavor looked straight ahead, swallowed thickly, and when he spoke his voice voice was hoarse. “Never.”

* * *

There was a time when perhaps Treavor might have asked Wallace to stay, and though Wallace could feel Treavor’s gaze at his back while he slowly picked up bottles and hung Treavor’s clothes and found little things to tidy until there was simply nothing else with which to busy himself, no such request came. After he had bid Treavor goodnight and closed the door behind him, he had lingered on the other side for a minute, then two. Not waiting, certainly not _hoping_...of course not...such presumption….until came the faint noise of muffled sobbing.

_Go to bed._

_Go to him._

Wallace stood at the door until at last the sound subsided.


	2. Endings

Even after Wallace had sussed it out, and he could no longer entertain the fervent hope that Treavor knew nothing, this was the shameful truth of it: He wanted Treavor there when it happened.

It was true, of course, that Treavor might deliver him with a cry of “No! Halt!” before the killing began, and Wallace would have liked to believe that he would, but barring some last-minute salvation at the hands of his own executioner, it seemed likely that the guns would fire, and Wallace's chief concern was that Treavor was there in the moments before and after the shots. There was the shame, even now. Wallace hoped dearly, in that corner of his brain in which idle fantasy lived on, that Treavor might be there to hold him at the end.

A foolish notion, but then, Wallace had always been a fool when it came to his lordship, and anyway, he had read the stories. They were fanciful things, borrowed from the manor’s library, read and returned surreptitiously: romances about kings and their stalwart knights, stalwart knights and their loyal squires. He had read a great many, and sometimes those knights and squires were killed in their service, but their deaths occurred as the books neared their ends, and were accompanied, if not by long speeches, at least by a sense of weight. In some, the narrative came to a halt as the hero cradled his dying man and poured out his grief. Time slowed—laments stretched on for many verses, even pages—there were tears and pleas, and all the while the dying soldier bleeding quietly with his head in the lap of his king or commander until it was over. (And all the while Wallace sitting there, reading, with a curious ache blooming in his chest, and a focused sense of resolution settling over him.) Then a final battle, and the story concluded. From such stories Wallace had learned the language of service and devotion, but the most important lesson they had imparted to him was how to die when the time came.

_“You have me,” he had said once._  


* * *

Treavor’s bed was empty that morning when Wallace came to dress him, but there was a note on the desk in Treavor’s elegant, looping script.

>   
>  _My dear Wallace,_  
>  _We are departing for a safe and secure place where we can coordinate the transition of power to ourselves. Make certain that my audiograph and the best of the wines make it aboard the vessel before the sun sets. This evening the staff will be rewarded for their loyalty and service._  
>  _Lord Pendleton_  
> 

Three thoughts detonated in his brain in quick succession. My dear Wallace. _Ah, so it ends today._ My dear Wallace. The note was brief, perfunctory—messy, even, toward the end, where the writing morphed into a scrawl— _was he drinking as he wrote this? Was he afraid? Did he ever sleep last night?_ —but Wallace dared think there was something in the salutation. Something meaningful. Perhaps he was just a foolish old man, grasping at straws for memory or purpose on the threshold of the Void, and yet...My dear Wallace. If it was apologetic, conciliatory, sincere, tender, Wallace could not say. It could be all things to him; is not a man on his way out entitled to what comfort he can scrap from this wretched world? But there was something else, and at last it alighted on Wallace, the moment of revelation: _He means to lay claim to me, even now._ He read the words again and again. The address emanated a warmth that Wallace leaned into as if it were a gentle touch, soft as the memory of a wine-flushed squeeze of a hand in a quiet study. Yours, Wallace thought. To the end. Named, claimed, and called dear. It felt like absolution of sorts. _He has not disowned me at the final moment._ Wallace could live with that, and more importantly, he could die with it.

* * *

It was still early, and as Wallace stood over a pot of porridge in the inn’s kitchen, he mused on how it felt like any other day. And why shouldn’t it? Maybe it was better this way. Better not to make a drama of it; better to fulfill one’s duties until the final moment.

Cecelia and Lydia joined him for breakfast. Lydia kept shooting him inquisitive looks; Cecelia was quiet.

“So, Wallace,” Lydia broke the silence. “Will you be moving into the Tower with Lord Pendleton, or will he stick you back on your shelf at the _grand_ Pendleton Manor?”

Wallace glared at her. “I beg your pardon, Miss Brooklaine?”

Lydia shrugged. “The Admiral told me. Said he and the others are accompanying the Lady Emily to the Tower this evening. Said Corvo’s on one last mission, but he’ll meet them there. So my question for you, Wallace, is whether Lord Pendleton is packing you up and whisking you off to the Tower with the rest of his things, or if your usefulness is spent for the time being.”

“I—I beg your par—I will go wherever Lord Pendleton has the greatest need of me,” he finished stiffly.

“Oh, Wallace, relax. I thought, assumed, his lordship would keep you with him. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Trotting along at Pendleton’s heel like a loyal hound.” She winked. “Might be the young Empress will reward you—all of us. Never know.” She was baiting him in her usual playfully insolent manner, and Wallace was too distracted to rise to it, so instead he simply sniffed and said, “Good service is its own reward.” Lydia smiled lopsidedly and rolled her eyes. They fell to eating again.

“It will be so quiet here with everyone gone,” Cecelia said, a twinge of sadness creeping into her words, the first she had spoken aloud that morning. “Just Lydia and me. Again.”

“Aw, silly girl,” said Lydia. “Going to miss all our guests, are you? Going to miss washing the High Overseer’s britches, are you?”

Cecelia colored slightly. “It’s been nice,” she shrugged. “Having people around who aren’t weepers.” She smiled apologetically. “Though I suppose I won’t miss the washing so much...or the dishes.”

Lydia looked bemused. “Oh, eat your porridge, girl.”

The moment Cecelia finished her breakfast and left to begin her day’s chores, Lydia turned to Wallace, who was steadfastly avoiding her eye. “Where _are_ you going, Wallace?” she asked, leaning in. “You’re acting strange, keeping secrets....or...or is it that you don’t know, because _he_ hasn’t told you? I can see how that might get under your skin—”

“Tower,” Wallace blurted.

“Why didn’t you say, then? If you’re worried he won’t need you there, Wallace, know that I only jested.” She snorted. “I expect he’ll need you his entire life. Don’t fret, Wally,” she patted his arm. “You won’t find yourself out of a job any time soon.” She paused, seeming to wait for a retort that didn’t come. “Unless...unless it’s something else altogether.”

“There’s lots to do to prepare for this evening,” Wallace brushed past her. “Oh,” he paused in the doorway, unable to face her, “and the staff is receiving bonuses tonight. In case you hadn’t been informed.”

He left Lydia in the kitchen and went back upstairs, pausing at his own door, wondering if it was even worth packing his own meagre belongings. But of course it was: it would leave things tidy after this was over, and anyway, there was still a chance that he had misread things, that he actually would be attending Treavor to the tower, or that—supposing he had it all exactly right—Treavor might still deliver him. That, and Lydia was on his scent now, and the least Wallace could do was cover his tracks.

Once his own things were folded neatly into his trunk, he moved down the hall to Treavor’s vacated room and started on his lordship’s belongings.

As he folded clothes, the old thought, suppressed a thousand times, floated up again: He could pack this trunk and take Treavor away with him—they could flee with what little they had, far away from the filth and plague and stinking river and the viper’s nest of Dunwall’s nobility and especially from the twins—far from the twins—and perhaps there was a small house by the sea, where they could pass their days together, and Wallace would always be there to serve and protect him. Never had he come closer to begging Treavor to come with him than that night in the study at the manor. The words had threatened to spill from his mouth, but then Treavor had asked, hope and doubt in his eyes, and Wallace’s pleas had died on his lips and he simply told Treavor the truth. And now, packing his lordship’s clothes one last time, he had this final chance to ask for a future, no matter how mad it might be, and he wondered, _If I had told him then, laid it out before him,_ and he thought, _I could still do it now, bow my head and beg his forgiveness: I’m sorry for loving you. I’m sorry I never said._

But then, there were so many things Wallace should have said over the years, so many missteps that Wallace might have prevented if he had but spoken up. The drinking, and the dalliances, and the poor company, and the conspiracy, and decades of errors and questionable decisions that Wallace had witnessed Treavor make and said nothing. _It’s not my place,_ he told himself at the time, and perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps his silence had been befitting of a good servant. But was it befitting of a good man? _If you really cared for him, wouldn’t you have said something on a hundred occasions? Was your silence born of propriety, or cowardice?_ And Wallace had no answer to that, and he wasn’t sure he wanted one.

It wasn’t too late. He was here, and so was Treavor, and they each had just enough to take with them. Wallace didn’t have the foggiest idea how they would slip past the quarantine, but Treavor was smart, Treavor could always formulate a plan for the both of them. Wallace closed his eyes and let himself picture it again: a little cottage or apartment, cooled by the sea breeze in summer and warmed by a stove in winter, and Treavor bundled into warm commoner’s clothing, cheeks a healthy pink, eyes no longer bleary with drink or exhaustion. Wallace would keep him safe. It might not be easy, but it would be a life.

 _Stop it._ What would either of them do, the two of them, who had lived in a lord’s mansion their whole lives, in Fraeport or the like, with neither friends nor money nor workman’s skill? And anyway, if Treavor wanted this, he would have come to Wallace first, not sent him to face the guns ( _the long-awaited crash in the night_ ) alone. And Wallace could not fault him. Havelock and Martin had so much to offer—repairs to the Pendleton name and reputation, influence, wealth, respect. All Wallace had was a way out, and he had never even offered it aloud. It was good and right, perhaps, that all the unsaid words—his shameful, desperate pleas and confessions—would die with him—good and right that Treavor would never be burdened with them. “Your duty is to relieve Lord Pendleton’s burdens, not add to them your own,” was what the senior Mr. Higgins had always told him, and Wallace could hear the words even now.

Wallace’s father had started coughing one day, and over the months the coughs became wheezes, and the wheezing grew weaker and weaker until one day it stopped altogether, and it was as if Mr. Higgins, for all his talk of legacy, had faded into the very beams of the house and left nary a trace. Selfish as it might be, Wallace didn’t want to disappear like that—surely there was something he might leave behind—surely after whatever remained of him was thrown into the river and devoured, and his paltry belongings back at the manor were distributed or disposed of—surely that wouldn’t be the end of Wallace Higgins. Surely every trace of him would not be wiped from the earth so rapidly.

Wallace’s heart was thudding and a curious unfamiliar terror was creeping over him, and he thought he understood for the first time why men like Treavor write memoirs and record audiographs. His mind raced. _There must be something, I must have something, worth saving._

He hurried back to the servants’ room and was rifling frantically through his trunk when Lydia startled him. “What are you doing, Wallace?”

He jumped only slightly. “Packing.”

“Looks like you’re unpacking.”

“Outsider’s eyes, Lydia,” Wallace snapped. “Don’t you have business to attend to, or must you meddle in mine as well? I have much to do.”

There was a pause. Then he heard, “As you say then,” and the fading sound of footsteps.

At last he found what he was looking for. It wasn’t much; Wallace didn’t own very much, and very little of what he did own was of any value whatsoever, but this was arguably the finest thing he had brought to the Hound Pits with him in this meagre trunk. It was a handkerchief, nothing more, but it was clean, and more importantly, it was pretty—maybe the only pretty thing Wallace owned. His mother had been a dazzlingly clever seamstress, and though most of her talents went to use mending the Pendletons’ torn and damaged garments, she had sewn pretty things when she could, until her arthritic hands could no longer work a needle. The handkerchief had been a present for Wallace—not for any occasion, just a mother’s gift to her son because Mrs. Higgins was like that—only a few years before she had passed. Wallace was not a sentimental man, he told himself, but he could neither use the gift nor bear to part with it, and so it had ended up in his trunk the night he and Treavor had left the manor.

Wallace unfolded it, spent a long moment tracing the intricate pattern of daffodils embroidered around the edges. Then he folded it again, returned to Treavor’s room, and placed it into the trunk with the rest of his lordship’s clothes.

 _There._ Something, at least, would make it out of the pub, and maybe (and he knew the incredible presumption merely in thinking it, and thought it anyway) Lord Treavor might notice it, and understand Wallace’s meaning: that it was alright. Wallace had known, and it was alright.

He had closed the trunk and was preparing to hoist it down to the riverside (Samuel, apparently, had returned, his absence unexplained), when a shadow fell across him, and when he looked up, Treavor stood hunched in the door.

“Milord?” Wallace straightened up.

“Wallace—ah—I—I came to tell you to take my trunk down to the boat when you were done packing, but I see you are already doing so.” He laughed briefly, nervously. “I suppose you hardly need me to tell you what to do.”

“I try to anticipate your needs, milord. However -” _He had to try, even if it was hopeless._ “However, if you would prefer, I could find another task to keep me busy. It doesn’t have to be _this_. Wherever—whatever you wish, milord.”

Treavor looked stricken. “Listen,” he said frantically, and closed the space between them in two quick steps. “Wallace—” Wallace held his breath as Treavor reached for him, grabbed a fistful of Wallace’s jacket, leaned toward him almost imperceptibly. “ - Look…”

Treavor’s hand balled around Wallace’s lapel shook, and without thinking, Wallace reached out to steady the man’s elbow. They stood like that for a moment, Wallace not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe, with Treavor frozen in indecision, and for a moment, Wallace let himself hope.

And then Treavor released him, gave him a pat on the chest, said, “Excellent work, Wallace. Really excellent work. If you’ll just give me a moment, I have one last audiograph to record—I expect I’ll be finished and out of your way by the time you make it back up here.” And that was that.

Wallace stood dumbly while Treavor took a seat, and then he came back to himself. Treavor was right: by the time Wallace had hauled the trunk down to the boat and was returning empty-handed, he could hear Treavor’s voice wafting down the stairs. He took his time climbing the stairs, managed to time his movement to Treavor’s departure so that they met in the doorway, but Treavor averted his eyes and made no remark when they crossed paths.

* * *

It was really happening, Wallace thought numbly as he hoisted the audiograph and started down the stairs, fighting the urge to cry, “Wait!!” after Treavor. He’d been waiting on it for days now—truly, he had been waiting on it, the end, since the night in the Pendleton study, months ago. But now it all seemed to be happening too fast, and he needed time, time to _think_ , to clear his head—

He missed the ground floor landing, struck with the sudden and urgent need to go, just _go_ , go somewhere and be alone—he kept descending the stairs, and then he was in the cellar, and then he was going through the cellar door and then through another, and then he was safe, alone, with the brick wall at his back and the flowing sewer before him. He needed a moment, just a moment, a few minutes, to calm himself, to compose himself, to string a single thought together before all the threads flew apart and dispersed in the wind again.

He was sitting—he didn’t remember setting the audiograph down, or sinking to the ground beside it—but there it was, and there he was, leaning against the bricks, knees bent before his chest. Without thinking, he reached over and flipped the switch on the audiograph: a click, and then the rasp of Treavor’s voice, as if he was there next to him. _“Wallace!”_ came the call, and Wallace nearly scrambled to his feet out of habit. _“Before your meeting with Havelock downstairs, I want you to haul this to the boat for me!”_ It was strange, Wallace thought, that this was how he would live on: as a mute, unseen serving figure in Treavor’s memoirs—more often the target of Treavor’s ire and impatience than confidence and warmth. And there had been warmth, that much Wallace knew, if he knew anything at all. Warmth, and mutual trust, and perhaps happiness too, someday, if they could just live through this.

 _“I’m not ready,”_ he whispered, imperceptibly quiet. _“Please. I’m not ready. I need more time. This can’t be all. There must be more to it than this.”_

But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the way he dreamed it, perhaps, but it still counted for something. It must. If Wallace had only done more—oh, there were so many things he should have done, so many chances he had missed—it didn’t have to be like this—it could have ended so much differently.

But this was it, and Wallace was left with two choices: flee and hide somewhere, like a rat, abandon his life, abandon his promise—or do his duty.

And Wallace knew—as if there had ever been any real question—what he was going to do. Knew it with the same unshakable certainty he had known reading those old books, known when he pledged his loyalty to Treavor that night at the manor.

_I was loyal to the last. I loved him. There must be honor in that._

He sat there, fingering the note Treavor had left him, tracing the “My dear Wallace” with his thumb, clutching the paper so tightly, as if it could impart to him the strength he needed to go back upstairs and do what must be done. _Back upstairs._ He took out his watch. How long had he been there? They would miss him up above. He could breathe again now, thankfully, and so he hastily dragged the cuff of his sleeve across his eyes and returned to the main floor.

Lydia was there in the hall as if she’d been waiting for him, and whatever reproach she was preparing slipped away as she looked up and caught his face.

“Wallace?”

“Miss Brooklaine,” he nodded curtly as he made to walk past her. She caught his arm.

“Wallace,” she said again, a bit more forcefully, and then her tone and grip gentled. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Miss Brooklaine, I am exceedingly busy preparing his lordship’s personal effects for the move. Now if you will please excu—”

“Wallace, you’ve been crying.”

He tried to sidestep her, but she nimbly blocked his path, and rather than dance back and forth attempting to dodge her, he looked directly forward, over her head, at some point in the distance past the open front door. “Miss Brooklaine, please,” he sighed. “Remove yourself from my path. Make yourself useful.”

And for once, Lydia did as she was bid without remark, though not before a moment’s tense silence. “Why were you crying?” she called after his back. “Are you alright? What’s going on? Wallace, what’s going on?” And Wallace did not know what to say, so he pretended he did not hear.

“Fine! You don’t have to tell me, Higgins; I do not care. Keep your gloomy secrets. But when you’re finished collecting Lord Pendleton’s _personal effects_ , join the rest of us in the yard—they’re handing out the staff’s bonuses.”

Wallace froze in his place on the stairs. “Already?” he asked quietly, turning back toward Lydia.

“Already?” Lydia laughed at that. “Outsider, Wallace, it’s about time somebody gave us something other than another load of dirty laundry and complaints about the chill. Go on, see to your business. We’ll be waiting outside.”

Wallace took several shaky breaths on the stairs. In truth there were no more of Treavor’s belongings to pack— _no_ —the audiograph— _damn_ —but that would take too long—he needed more time, he needed more _time_ —he had to find Treavor and tell him—

“Mr. Higgins?”

It was a small voice that interrupted his tumbling, desperate train of thought this time, softly calling him back down.

Wallace’s heart sank.

Cecelia stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at him with that timid expression she so often wore. Wallace looked at her wearily. _It shouldn’t have to end like this for her. It doesn’t._

“Lydia told me to come and fetch you, sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb, it’s just, the bonuses—”

“Thank you for telling me, Cecelia. You may go upstairs now.”

Cecelia shifted nervously. “I thought...that is...Lydia said…” she trailed off.

Wallace feigned confusion, and then disbelief. “You think _you_ are _entitled_ to a bonus? Given the quality of your work, my girl, it will be some time yet before you’re given so much as a penny extra.”

He was being cruel, he knew, and Cecelia’s face had crumpled, and all she managed to stammer was a quavery “oh” before Wallace couldn’t take it any longer and barked, “Go upstairs, girl! Up to the attic! And stay out of the way while we arrange our departure. I don’t want to see your face again today. A _bonus_ …. _Outsider_ ….”

Cecelia raced past him on the stairs like a whipped dog, and Wallace felt such a heaviness in his chest that he might have remained like that, leaning on the handrail with his head bowed in shame, indefinitely, had Lydia not shouted for him once more, all the way from the yard.

Slowly, slowly, he dragged down the stairs, through the hall, toward the back door. And in the open doorway, waiting for him, stood Lord Pendleton.

“Wallace,” he said, as Wallace drew near.

“Milord.”

They stood like that for several long moments, Treavor begging for something with a silent beseeching look, and Wallace too choked with sorrow and feeling to say any of the thousand things he so desperately needed to.

“Wallace, I—” Treavor put a hand on his shoulder. Squeezed it. Shook his head. “I—”

“That’s all right, milord,” Wallace nodded. He dared return the gesture, placed his hand over Treavor’s thin shoulder—he could feel the bone through the padding of his lordship’s coat— _someone will need to make sure he eats_. They were quiet, and then Treavor’s mouth twisted and he bent his head.

"Come on now," Havelock's gruff voice broke the silence between them. "It's time."

Wallace gave Treavor’s shoulder one more warm squeeze. With his other hand he felt for the note in his pocket, clutched it tightly in his fist, wanting to keep those words close now. “Milord,” he murmured. “It’s been an honor. Truly.”

A lingering smile—sad and sincere—and Wallace turned and walked, with straight back and raised chin, into the blinding blue light of the yard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, it's not all that I wanted it to be, but it was (unfortunately) the best I could do. someone please talk to me about wallace..i'm sad

**Author's Note:**

> Have suggestions? Think this was too long? Too boring? Insufferably pretentious? Shoddily written? Decent? I would love to know!


End file.
